AAF Week 5 recap: Offenses come to life

Week 5 in the AAF started to look like real football. Many teams opened up their attacks, some because of improved quarterback situations and others because they fell behind early and had to play catch up. After only 65 “drive points” were scored in Week 4, a whopping 126 were scored in Week Five.

If you’re new to VSiN, “drive points” are only those scored on offensive drives of 60 yards or more. We’re trying to learn which offenses can drive the field for points, and which defenses can prevent opponents from doing so. We exclude any defensive or special teams points, or those scored by the offense on shorter drives due to field position breaks.

Note that Aaron Murray had another huge yardage week in his second game at QB for Atlanta, though, a lot of that is still in the middle of the field. Atlanta gained 454 and 410 yards the past two weeks, but scored only 9 and 11 drive points.

Keith Price took over the QB position for the helpless Birmingham offense after Luis Perez was finally benched. Price’s “escape-ability” provided several big plays, though going only 2 of 15 on third downs is still a red flag.

While Over/Unders did go 4-0 to the Over last week (finally some scoring!), scoreboards were inflated by four defensive touchdowns. If you take those TDs off the board, the four games would have landed on 37, 40, 43, and 48. Still higher than what we had been seeing. But not quite the Arena League.

Both San Diego and Birmingham turned into pumpkins for a week defensively…with San Diego allowing 22 drive points to Salt Lake, Birmingham 23 to league juggernaut Orlando. Let’s see if we’re merging toward defensive parity with improving weather and the weeding out of the most helpless quarterbacks.